Art Institute of Chicago

Finding Virginie's Body, plate 5 from Paul et Virginie

Charles-Melchior Descourtis (French, 1753-1820)

Date

1795-97

Medium

Etching and engraving, from four plates, in yellow, blue, red and black, on ivory laid paper

Culture

France

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

One of the most accomplished color printmakers of his era, Charles Melchior Descourtis produced a body of work that is small and relatively unknown. Descourtis learned his method of multiple-plate color printing from Jean François Janinet and like him used toolwork on the plate rather than aquatint, an acid immersion process used to create general areas of shading. In this print, Virginie decides to return home to Mauritius after several miserable years in Paris, where she has agonized over her separation from Paul. However, a typhoon strikes her ship within sight of the island. In line with 18th-century French ideals of virtue in women, she refuses to remove her clothing and swim to safety in front of the sailors, and so she drowns in the shipwreck. Her body is eventually found amid debris washed up on the shore, and Domingue and the narrator discover that she kept a locket with a portrait of Paul close to her, even until her death.

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